Thought you guys may find this amusing reading. They've used pretty much every fallacy in the book - especially the ones dealing with Atheists in particular.

Probably no God?Atheists bury their heads in the sand

Out and about on Britain's roads, you probably wouldn't expect an atheist to challenge you about your belief in God. But this is currently the case in England, Scotland and Wales1) where what have been dubbed 'atheist buses' are currently sporting the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

The initial idea for the advertising campaign came back in June 2008 from an article2 written by a comedy writer, Ariane Sherine. She was unsettled by an advert that she saw on a London bus with the verse: "When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8), followed by the Christian organisation's website. Sherine was able to read there that, as a non-believer, she would be "condemned to everlasting separation from God and then spend all eternity in torment in hell."3

In response to this, Ariane jokingly suggested that if 4,680 atheists read her article and all contributed ,£5, then they could run their own advert on the London buses. The suggestion was warmly received by the atheist community with over ,£150,000 raised since October 2008 in support of the idea.4 Even the 'evangelical' atheist and supreme Darwinist Richard Dawkins personally donated ,£5,500. Due to the vast amount of money which has been donated to the campaign, it was decided to also place slogans inside the buses as well as throughout London's tube (underground rail network).5 The advertising campaign was officially put into action on 9th January.

Atheists: "There's probably no God"

The slogan does not say that there is no God, but rather is qualified by the word "probably" for two reasons: firstly, so that it does not breach the advertising standards in the UK, and secondly because you cannot prove a negative; i.e. lack of positive evidence is insufficient to completely disprove something. For example, just because no-one has ever seen a luminous green elephant wearing a sombrero, this does not necessarily mean that one does not exist, even though it is highly unlikely. To disprove it one would need to be simultaneously observing every part of the world, indeed the universe, which could possibly harbour such an entity. Similarly, to completely disprove God's existence, one would need to have a near-infinite amount of knowledge.

While an official definition of atheism simply means not believing that there is a God, as defined on the official 'atheist bus' website, it has a bigger meaning: "It's about making sense of the world, thinking freely and feeling liberated because of it. It's about using your intellect and sense of reason to learn what life is about, and having the courage to think for yourself. It's about relying on evidence when deciding on your beliefs, and being brave enough to speak the truth."6 There is considerable fluff and nonsense in this statement. Let us consider some of these statements.

Atheists: "It's about making sense of the world "¦ . It's about using your intellect and sense of reason to learn what life is about "¦ . It's about relying on evidence"

Just how does anyone go about making sense of the world? They have a framework (a set of presuppositions) from which they look at evidence and interpret this accordingly. The atheists' framework is naturalism,which does not allow the divine to intervene in this world (since it allegedly doesn't exist!),and they interpret the things that they see in the world around them accordingly. Both the atheist and the Christian have the same evidence. However, the Christian's presuppositional framework should always be the Bible, regardless of whether they are examining a spiritual issue or a physical issue. As Cornelius Van Til once said,

"The Bible is thought of as authoritative on everything which it speaks. And it speaks of everything. We do not mean that it speaks of football games, of atoms, etc, directly, but we do mean that it speaks of everything either directly of indirectly. It tells us not only of the Christ and his work but it also tells us who God is and whence the universe has come. It gives us a philosophy of history as well as history. Moreover, the information on these subjects is woven into an inextricable whole. It is only if you reject the Bible as the Word of God that you can separate its so called religious and moral instruction from what it says, e.g., about the physical universe" (emphasis added).7

Atheists: " "¦ feeling liberated because of it"

Feeling liberated from what? In Ariane's case, the founder of the campaign, it is liberation from the coming judgment of God upon this world. Ultimately this is what all atheism boils down to, a rejection of God, because it enables them to justify living any way they desire, without having to come under judgment for it by the Creator God who owns them.

Atheists: " "¦ and being brave enough to speak the truth"

In effect the whole campaign is a blatant attack on Christianity, for they do not want the Creator God to sit in judgment of them.

Just how do they define truth? For atheists, truth can never be an absolute, but only a subjective term. One wonders if it really matters what truth they are speaking as long as the truth they speak isn't that every knee will bow before the Lord Jesus Christ.

Atheists: "Now stop worrying and enjoy your life"

Some Christian groups have responded with advertisements promoting a belief in God, saying that it is only by becoming a Christian that you can enjoy life. Surprisingly, a more cutting response to the slogan has come from the agnostic camp. An article by Sarfaz Manzoor,8 who has recently lost his uncle, and lost his father 13 years ago, asks of the "atheist bus" people,

"What on earth is there to celebrate? We're talking about death, about not existing, being wiped out for ever. And it can happen any time. If that's not a cause for worry what is? "¦ "¦ Believers can take comfort in certainty; atheists have to take solace in the fact that life is short and then you die. That may be the truth but, my question is, how is that meant to cheer us up?"

Manzoor realises that death is indeed an inevitability for all people, regardless of what they may believe or their certainty as to when it will come. And although he believes in annihilation, rather than in the judgment of God to come after death, he acknowledges that this is a prospect less than comforting and well worth worrying about for the atheist. For Christians, it's why we should make the most of every opportunity to evangelise.

The atheist does not need to put a bus slogan up saying, 'Jesus is not the Son of God, he did not die for your sin, and he did not rise from the dead.' By simply removing the concept of God, and thus His ownership of this world, they don't need to enter into discussion about what the Bible has to say regarding sin, judgment, grace, mercy, love or Jesus Christ.

In effect the whole campaign is a blatant attack on Christianity, for they do not want the Creator God to sit in judgment of them. They want to put up a big sign up saying that this world is "under new management", a management which says, "God, we don't need you anymore. We now know that evolutionary processes brought us into being and that ultimately there is no meaning in life or judgment to come. So we will live our lives as we please. We will stop feeling guilty and will enjoy our lives in whatever way we see fit."

The atheist does not need to put a bus slogan up saying, "Jesus is not the Son of God, he did not die for your sin, and he did not rise from the dead." By simply removing the concept of God, and thus His ownership of this world, they don't need to enter into discussion about what the Bible has to say regarding sin, judgment, grace, mercy, love or Jesus Christ.

It's disappointing then that so many Christian leaders (and many Christians) just don't seem to see the importance of the creation/evolution origins debate for society today. In an interview in our last edition of Creation magazine, With no apology!9 Pastor Joe Boot said that,

"Suggesting this is a 'side issue' not only reveals a lack of exposure to sceptics and seekers of our time, but a profound ignorance of the Bible and the elementary questions of philosophy. Can you imagine, Moses, Jesus, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Pascal, Copernicus, Galileo or even Darwin, Marx, and Freud referring to the question of origins as a 'side issue'? I believe many Christians feel ill-equipped to deal with the subject as it is almost never preached about. However, the church will continue to be irrelevant to our time, if we persist in such thoughtless evasions."

And he's 100% spot on. Christians need to wake up and see where the battle lines are! Atheists are on the march and they are overtly attacking the very first verse of the Bible, "In the beginning God created."

This militant atheism should not surprise Christians because, after all, it is the 'year of Darwin', the year of celebrating the man that allowed atheists to be 'intellectually fulfilled' through believing his naturalistic theory of evolution,an undisguised attempt to remove God from the creative process.

This militant atheism should not surprise Christians because, after all, it is the "year of Darwin", the year of celebrating the man that allowed atheists to be "intellectually fulfilled" through believing his naturalistic theory of evolution,an undisguised attempt to remove God from the creative process. This year should provide Christians with even more opportunities to be pro-active in challenging atheism and evolution at every opportunity. This is an exciting year for CMI with the impending release of our new Darwin Documentary at various venues in the countries where our offices are based,and in some cases further afield. Plus ongoing efforts to secure as many broadcast screenings as we can. The Voyage That Shook The World seeks to bring the creation-evolution debate into the mainstream, gently challenging folk to consider some of the serious flaws with Darwin's theory. (If you're interested in hosting a Deconstructing Darwin event, perhaps incorporating the screening of the documentary, please contact your CMI representative here).

Pray that the 'atheist bus' campaign will have the opposite effect from that intended by its proponents,that people might be given cause to think, "Hold on, what if there is a God?", that they might worry about their state before Him, and find true enjoyment in their lives, having come to a repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Christ.

"It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man." Psalm 118:8

whinewhinewhine how dare anyone possibly consider that this life is the only one!

Worthless idiots and their worthless god. He's not a good god. He's not a rational god. He's a vengeful, spiteful, racist(the jews are his chosen people afterall), child murdering bastard who impregnated another mans wife, allowed his own son to die for sins that were not his to die for, and wrote a book that is full of inaccuracies inconsistencies and lies. Hell, he fucked up the world so much that he had to flood it out to "fix" it. People built a tower to try and be closer to god, so he knocked it down and made them speak different languages. Shit, what am I supposed to find comforting about this persona?

I'm sick of hearing the "two frameworks" argument, because it is dishonest and illogical. We can't let Christians get away with using that weird postmodern position that we can all have our own truth, depending on how we choose to interpret things. The truth is that there is no way to honestly look at the evidence and conclude that the Christian mythology or any other fairy tale contains anything factual. There aren't two or more sides to the issue: Christians are WRONG.

Sure, if they skew words and or ideas to fit their ideology or agenda, then this quote sounds just fine! To a dipshit.

Oooo! The atheist lacks belief in what lacks reason to believe, yet we do hypocritically in respect to any other fairy tale babble bullshit! And ooooo, they just want to sin, sin, sin even though we believe someone who was God but not God at the same time died in order for them to do just that! And even more ooooo, truth and morality is objective even though history does nothing but prove otherwise! OOOOOOOOO, they should worry about being obliterated into annihilation after their short lives even though finiteness is key for anything to be enjoyable and we should actually be the ones worrying since we are doomed to infinite redundancies which is torture in and of itself.

Ultimately this is what all atheism boils down to, a rejection of God, because it enables them to justify living any way they desire, without having to come under judgment for it by the Creator God who owns them.

I thought the author was doing quite well until this point, then I stopped reading.

Ultimately this is what all atheism boils down to, a rejection of God, because it enables them to justify living any way they desire, without having to come under judgment for it by the Creator God who owns them.

How does creating something necessarily lead to "ownership"? I realize this is a widespread concept, but it doesn't seem to fit with most practical examples I can think of. If it did, my dead 19th great-grandma would own me, except that there's more than one of them.

The only way to ensure "ownership" of one's creations would be to lock them away and never allow anything or anyone to interact with them in any way. Guess that would make God the Supreme Hoarder, were "he" to exist. Not a trait I find especially admirable.

She was unsettled by an advert that she saw on a London bus with the verse: "When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8), followed by the Christian organisation's website. Sherine was able to read there that, as a non-believer, she would be "condemned to everlasting separation from God and then spend all eternity in torment in hell."

What the article fails to mention is that there was indeed a link to a website on the christian bus adverts that-when you went on it-explicitly stated that non-christians would burn in hell.

nasher168 wrote:What the article fails to mention is that there was indeed a link to a website on the christian bus adverts that-when you went on it-explicitly stated that non-christians would burn in hell.

Thereby suggesting that many Christians, particularly potentially rationale ones who by accident of birth were baptized against their will, may suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

ebbixx wrote:Thereby suggesting that many Christians, particularly potentially rationale ones who by accident of birth were baptized against their will, may suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

That's actually not too far from the truth. Telling a child that they deserve to go to Hell is a form of child abuse, a way of terrorizing your child. People who are terrorized often do embrace the source of the abuse, as a way of coping with it. No wonder Christians cling so strongly to their faith... they have been "kidnapped" and brainwashed by it, and need some serious therapy to break free of it.

ImprobableJoe wrote:That's actually not too far from the truth. Telling a child that they deserve to go to Hell is a form of child abuse, a way of terrorizing your child.

I wasn't really joking. Well, at least no more than usual. And that dark sense of humor is probably at least partly my own coping mechanism for dealing with the echoes of my own case of Stockholm Syndrome, I suspect. I really do think the facts fit the syndrome, in a great many cases.

Might make for an interesting YT video if someone hasn't already done it. If one could find funding it would even perhaps be the germ for a serious documentary.

That reminded me of "The Dawkins Letters", that little book the rebutter of "the God Delusion" composed of his letters he originally posted on Richard Dawkins' website. And since they were originally posted on the web, you can find them with little difficulties. I started to read the letters with an open eye, I thought that since Dawkins does make a lot of really edgy comments maybe there are honest, proper rebuttals to his points available.

And after reading the first two paragraphs of the first letter, I was already writing a rebuttal and sizzling in my seat. What blatant misrepresentation, lies, ad hocs and incredulity arguments! I've written the rebuttals of two of the 12 letters so far(kinda busy with other things), but I intend to simply destroy them all.

And this garbage was just as bad. "Maybe there is a god and we all burn!" Oo, not intimidated. Pascals wager suggests atheism, since the evidence(outside personal experiences of course) can't really make heads or tails of the deity really up there.

"Just how does anyone go about making sense of the world? They have a framework from which they look at evidence and interpret this accordingly. The atheists' framework is naturalism,which does not allow the divine to intervene in this world" Uh, no. It would allow the interference of god, IF IT WAS PROVEN THAT THERE WAS A GOD. But since deities at the moment are at best a gut feeling, naturalism cannot consider their influence. Just like with the luminous green elephant wearing a sombrero. Who knows, maybe that is the reason that liquids drip through porous material, but since undetectable, they are discarded and the explanation via other means is done.

"However, the Christian's presuppositional framework should always be the Bible, regardless of whether they are examining a spiritual issue or a physical issue." So what he is saying is that anything but biblical literalism is false? Or is the real intention here just to say that the bible has all the answers if you wish really hard, praying to your ceiling and thinking of possible ways to interpret the diluted truth behind the prose? The bible is as full of shit as ever. The few ideas it has that are still kept as something good have been around from the beginning of civilisations. So the bible offers nothing new to anyone who can think for themselves.

"Feeling liberated from what? In Ariane's case, the founder of the campaign, it is liberation from the coming judgment of God upon this world. Ultimately this is what all atheism boils down to, a rejection of God, because it enables them to justify living any way they desire, without having to come under judgment for it by the Creator God who owns them." If I was but a bit annoyed of the blatant misrepresentation of how the atheists think up until this paragraph, after this I was furious. I felt the liberation very vividly. With all the teachings of basically whatever you do, you are screwed unless you genuinely repent this. Since I felt most of the "sins" moronic or pety or just simply wrong("should not be a sin"-kinda wrong) anyway, I felt that my repetance was rarely honest and I was propably listed to hell. So after you live with that kind of shit for only a decade like I did, the amount of guilt is pretty huge. And after all that self-beating the feeling of liberation is equally amazing. So yeah, the liberation from this feeling is really something more than the rejection of god to justify our wicked ways. Or do you feel that eating shellfish and wearing a modern piece of clothing(that are all made of mixed fabrics) is enough to let you burn with sociopaths? I don't see that as just and fair thing, and when I realized that the whole concept of the god of christianity didn't hold up to the facts I've seen, the realization of a reality without a pety, vengefull, sadistic prick watching over you was something unrivaled.

"Just how do they define truth? For atheists, truth can never be an absolute, but only a subjective term. One wonders if it really matters what truth they are speaking..." Opinions can be subjective as can the question of something being wrong. Truth on the other hand is objective, not varying on the intrepretation. Even if we take their claim "everyone will bow to JC someday" as a truth, we are just presenting another point of view on that "truth". We claim there is not enough information to say if this really is true or not, whilst the writer claims to know this by some inside information, most likely from a tome of a nation with too much sand up their crack so they had to invent a way to escape reality after the horrid lifetime of sandblasting your butt every time you take a dump was over. We cannot know the truth until a paradox-proof timemachine is invented for historical purposes.

After this the message seems to be that atheistic worldview doesn't supply anything to celebrate, which is like the nutty turd painted red and presented as the cherry on top of this pile-o-shit. If you wish to celebrate now, in this life, atheism gives you the most reasons for it. This being your only chance for it being one of the best. You being the insignificant little spec of starstuff on a meaningless little planet on some average galaxy in an ever expanding universe slowly drifting away to its death, what does it really matter what you do? On a universal scale, absolutely nothing. On a galactic scale, absolutely nothing. On a planetary scale, next to nothing. On a family scale, at least a decade of reminescense. On a personal scale, everything you make it matter. If you can't handle the simple fact that if mankind destroys itself now, no one in the wide universe would miss us, then do what every god-believer should and pull the trigger. Since this is just the purgatory before your eternal bliss, a place where evil is allowed to run rampant, why the hell stay here when you can just ask your all-loving god forgiveness(in his or his sons name) and go to him instantly? If you can't think of any other reason but some scripture quote, then your life must be really meaningless indeed. But I bet most can think of something they don't want to part with. And why would those reasons be any less without a god?

And after that we have a call to arms, "let us fight the evil evilution!" an' all that bible-belt belching bag of bile bubonic plague infested eye-burrowing worms.

Feeling much better now. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience. Goddam creatards are a great way to vent, when I don't have any violent videogames at hand.

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein

Out and about on Britain's roads, you probably wouldn't expect an atheist to challenge you about your belief in God. But this is currently the case in England, Scotland and Wales1) where what have been dubbed 'atheist buses' are currently sporting the slogan "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Challenging? That's a bit of an odd way of putting it. Maybe I'm over-reacting, but it seems to me that Christians are usually very quick to act defensive when they encounter views different to their own. I certainly wouldn't interpret a pro-God sign as a challenge to anything.

There is considerable fluff and nonsense in this statement. Let us consider some of these statements.

Yes, let's. (Pot, meet kettle)

Just how does anyone go about making sense of the world? They have a framework (a set of presuppositions) from which they look at evidence and interpret this accordingly.

Why do religious people love to bang on about presuppositions so much? "Yes, we're biased, but so are you!"

I can't speak for anyone else here, but I have no "framework" that I interpret reality in light of. Instead my opinions and views are based on reality, as they should be. This is just an attempt to reduce the debate over God's existence (and, frequently, evolution) into a matter of opinions where facts are pointless and the percieved morality of one's side is all that matters.

Feeling liberated from what? In Ariane's case, the founder of the campaign, it is liberation from the coming judgment of God upon this world. Ultimately this is what all atheism boils down to, a rejection of God, because it enables them to justify living any way they desire, without having to come under judgment for it by the Creator God who owns them.

Come here for a moment, I have a hand gesture I'd like to show you.

How anyone could spout such nonsense without realizing what they're doing is completely beyond me. When I first became an atheist this view shocked me, and it continues to do so to this day. To tell another person what they believe is incredibly pointless and stupid.

Just how do they define truth? For atheists, truth can never be an absolute, but only a subjective term. One wonders if it really matters what truth they are speaking as long as the truth they speak isn't that every knee will bow before the Lord Jesus Christ.

What utter crap. I've heard this same tired argument argument again and again and I have yet to ever hear a reason for why God's existence suddenly endows certain views and opinions with inerrant truth, just confident statements that this is so.

"What on earth is there to celebrate? We're talking about death, about not existing, being wiped out for ever. And it can happen any time. If that's not a cause for worry what is? "¦ "¦ Believers can take comfort in certainty; atheists have to take solace in the fact that life is short and then you die. That may be the truth but, my question is, how is that meant to cheer us up?"

I notice that this is from the agnostic "camp" rather than "community" (what the hell is the "atheist community" anyway?)

This is a rather odd view (especially coming from an agnostic). Believers don't have certainty, they have faith. To believe very strongly in something is very different to actually knowing it to be true. Manzoor seems to be advocating blind faith in a comforting idea simply to hide ourselves from the negative aspects of existence.

Well, balls to that. I might not have faith to tide me over but on the other hand at least I recognize that this is the one shot I have at happiness. When I stopped believing in the afterlife I completely re-evaluated the way I look at life and I'm very thankful of that. It's given me the drive to live my life as I want to, rather than putting it off for an imaginary paradise that's never going to come. I think facing up to a few grim truths is a reasonable price to pay for that.

Manzoor realises that death is indeed an inevitability for all people, regardless of what they may believe or their certainty as to when it will come. And although he believes in annihilation, rather than in the judgment of God to come after death, he acknowledges that this is a prospect less than comforting and well worth worrying about for the atheist. For Christians, it's why we should make the most of every opportunity to evangelise.

This one blew me away. When the best your worldview gives you is a pressing reason to evangelize, you know you're in trouble.

Also, Manzoor and whoever is writing this may feel that death is worth worrying about, but their views don't really matter because it's our view of death that's under discussion here. Does anyone else feel as if they're at a dinner table being talked about as if they're not actually there?

It's disappointing then that so many Christian leaders (and many Christians) just don't seem to see the importance of the creation/evolution origins debate for society today.

Wait, what? Why is he bringing up evolution all of a sudden?

And he's 100% spot on. Christians need to wake up and see where the battle lines are! Atheists are on the march and they are overtly attacking the very first verse of the Bible, "In the beginning God created."

Actually, it's more than just atheists attacking that verse. Far more.